How to Develop an Idea

This post examines taking an abstract idea and turning it into something useful. It is a many-step process.

1. Record the idea. Depending on the idea, make a note of it, or put it into an appropriate media (sound file, drawing)
2. Examine the idea. 
• Is it viable? Is there some simple thing that makes it unworkable?
• What type of idea is it? My game-related ideas generally fall into one of two categories: World and Mechanics. World ideas include characters, settings, and plots. Mechanics are the specifics of how a game works.
• I will be focussing on Mechanics-related ideas in this post. World ones will be done in a future post (probably)
3. Flesh out the idea; build on it until you have something workable. Start as bare-bones as possible - what do you need in order to get through the first turn of the game?
• Using Shadows over Japan as an example; I needed all the pieces to set up the board, as well as the board itself, the cards, and tokens. In addition, I needed rules dictating how the board was to be set up, and at least a basic turn structure.
• Answer the following questions: (they may seem familiar)
• How do you conduct a given turn?
• What is the overall strategy?
4. Test and Review
• Once you have a basic idea of what you are going for, review it again for viability.
• Are there any crippling exploits that ruin the experience?
• Is any strategy particularly overpowered or underpowered?
• At this point however, you do not even necessarily have a win condition well-established. The game length is probably not yet determined, and gameplay itself is still in the Alpha (subject to massive change based on testing)
• Ensure that the win condition fits with the overall strategy - if the game is based around massing up resources, ensure that the player who does this best will win. 
• Again using SoJ as an example, I initially had a game length that took more than 3 hours to complete; based on this, I revised the turn structure and number of turns to something more appropriate. I also found it was annoying to move the turn tracker each turn, so I revised that to the card-per year method that it has now.
• You do not have to play out the whole game; if it starts getting boring, or you already know what you definitely want to change for next time, end the game early, do your revisions and start again.
5. Go into Beta
• Once you have at least a couple of games played to completion in a row without revising the rules, you are probably ready to go into Beta.
• I would recommend making a proper prototype at this point; return any borrowed pieces, and get a dedicated set for this game. If required, look into publishing companies to make it such as Game Crafter to produce a prototype. 
• Play the game, repeatedly, and with as many different people as possible. It is important to get many different perspectives. If possible, have people play a game without you there (or possibly without anyone who has played it before) in order to see how clearly your rulebook conveys its contents. 
• You may also want to record either a video of people playing the game, or just the relevant numbers involved in the game (for example, the income you make each turn).
• The amount of testing necessary depends largely on how complex your game is. Deeply strategic games with little chance involved need to be played hundreds of times by highly skilled players in order to ensure proper balance. 
• Simple trivia games (i.e. Cranium) do not need to have their mechanics extensively tested, but instead need to have their questions reviewed, in order to determine what percentage of people know each question, according to the demographics relevant to your game (or you could just wing it and hope for the best, as seemingly most trivia games do).
• Many games offset deterministic strategy and the AP associated with it by introducing chance into the game; chance comes in many forms, but it helps move some games along. Not being able to agonize 50 moves in advance helps some players finish their moves faster. If chance is a factor, determine what your probability curves should look like - do you want a lot of chaos, or just enough to keep high level players guessing?

What should you do from there? Your guess is as good as mine. See if you can get it published; either through a professional publisher or DIY. I have remained an amateur in this industry, as I am more interested in the design decisions than the business ones. 

But more on that later.

-Colin

A Game Designer's Toolkit

A list of various materials I have found to be useful to have around when designing and prototyping various games, in no particular order:

• Index Cards - Usefulness depends wildly on the game. You may cut them in half to make playing cards, depending on the size of card you want. They are useful for quick reference cards, which are especially handy when the rules change frequently throughout testing
• Blank Cards - I have a particular fondness for card games, so these come in handy when making decks of things. Buy them a few hundred at a time, as you never know when you'll need to use a lot of them.
• Pennies - Nothing like a useful token that you always have on hand. 
• Other Coins - Also useful if you need to track more than one thing, or if you need different denominations of whatever pennies are tracking.
• Pennygems - A very versatile counter, can colour code to almost anything
• Flat Marbles - At the dollar store, you can get packs of flat marbles which work well for keeping track of things; you can colour code them to correspond to health or mana; you can also paint details on to them if you are using them for game pieces

• Other Trackers - various dollar store fake gems can make for currencies, resources, or VP counters; this is usually if they fit the theme of the game better than regular counters; you can also use various beads, shapes, and whatever else fits your theme
• Army Men - those little green men make useful figures, whether you are making an RPG or a war game. There are usually a variety of them, often with vehicles for added diversity.
• Stealing other Games' Materials - Not to be underestimated. I have borrowed parts from Puerto Rico, Pandemic, Risk, and Go; though be sure not to lose any if you ever want to play the original game again. I also borrow heavily from Dominion if I am testing anything similar to it.
• Dice - Dice are very handy to have around. Whether for purposes of probability or tracking something numeric, it doesn't hurt to have dice (magic players usually use D20s to track their life). Have a variety of dice, both in colour, and number of sides.
• Pawns - These tend to start off as the generic player pieces for most of my games. I am referring to simple, colour coded pawns, like those you might see in snakes and ladders. Players are used to being colour coded in a lot of games, so these are great to have around.
• Bristol Board - whether you are making the board itself on this, or cutting it up to make markers or tiles, it is great to have large pieces of bristol board on hand. White is by far the most common colour to use, but if you have some artistic or colour-coding intent, feel free to use a variety of colours. [Also relevant: ruler, scissors, paper cutter]
• A Notebook and Clipboard (and stationary) - Easy to underestimate, but it helps to have a good writing surface to take notes on. If you are playtesting properly, you should learn something with every game. If necessary, extensively track what is going on in a game; if economy is a major factor, record how much money you are making every turn. Be sure to have enough pencils, and at least one good eraser.
• Excel - Yes, the spreadsheet program. Plot and record data about your game. About the components, gameplay data, factions, cards - whatever is relevant to your game. You may be surprised to see patterns in your data, or any holes that in retrospect seem obvious. If you are not surprised, in all likelyhood it is because you already know how useful this technique can be. Oh and also, KEEP YOUR SPREADSHEET UP TO DATE!!!! An outdated spreadsheet is a useless spreadsheet.
• Smartphone or Tablet - These are not quite as good as a notebook for writing, but make up for it in portability, as well as the ability to read PDFs; it makes it possible to have an up to date electronic copy of your rulebook or reference material on hand. They are also useful if you require a timer in your game, or are just taking down ideas that come to you throughout your work day.
• Containers - Somewhere to store your prototypes, or just to keep all of your bits and pieces organized. Tackle boxes work well for this, though you may want to use trading card boxes, plastic baggies, pencil cases, binders; whatever works for you. 
• Post It Notes - Useful for keeping things organized, particularly in your rule book. If you have any reference tables you need to keep coming back to, put a note there. 

You do not require all of these things; these types of resources are very game specific, and even within this list, many are redundant to each other. But hopefully, it will give you some ideas.

Until next time,

-Colin

How to introduce a new game to someone

It has happened to every board gamer; you have bought a shiny new game, and now need to find yourself some opponents. If you are not lucky enough to have an open-minded group of gaming buddies, who have the patience and mental capacity to learn a new set of rules and strategies, then you have encountered this problem. Introducing people and games to each other, particularly involing people who may not be sold on board gaming.

Hopefully, you are smart enough to pick a simple enough game to break in newbies, a la Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, or something along those lines.

Your first job is to convey two critical pieces of information:

• How to conduct a turn
• The overall strategy

The order in which you present this information depends greatly on the game. Ultimately, whichever is easiest to explain should be explained first.

Using Ticket to Ride as an example, I made the mistake of trying to explain the overall strategy first to a group of novices - a few sentences in to explaining high-risk high reward routes and strategically picking routes, I could sense eyes glazing over. I immediately switched to what is easiest to explain and understand: how to conduct a given turn; in this case, either draw 2 regular cards or 1 face up wild card, place trains, or get new route cards.

That was simple enough, but raised the question of which would be best to do in a given turn. Next was to explain that you generally want your cards to be of the same colour, as they can be placed on longer routes, which are worth more points. You want to place trains on the shortest path between your destinations, so once you have the required cards, you would place your trains before someone else did. Once all of your routes are complete, get some more, unless you don't think that you will be able to finish them before the game ends.

This summarized stategy is a lot easier to explain once it has the concrete turn structure, and provides a useful rule of thumb for what to do. As player gain experience, they will be able to refine these rules as they improve at the game.

Players ultimately need to understand exactly WHAT they can do each turn (their options) and WHY they would want to do that. Without this information, one cannot hope to play any game. From there, just make sure they know WHEN the game ends, and HOW to win the game.

There is a phrase I have come to loathe when teaching a new game: "tell me what to do". Nothing frustrates me more when teaching a game to new players; I do not want to play against puppets, but motivated players who understand their options and who will make interesting decisions in a game. I utterly despise telling my opponent what to do, as it not only completely defeats the purpose of even having an opponent, it displays contempt of the game on their part. I love games, and you are insulting everything I stand for, and me by extension; there may be no malice in your heart, but fuck you nonetheless.

But I digress.

I have also found that people learn best by example. You should generally have the new players go last, and provide commentary for your turns so as to explain what you are doing and why you are doing it. People learn orders of magnitude better by seeing rather than hearing.

For more complex games, teach the rules as you go. Start playing immediately as soon as players have a basic idea of the turn structure, and teach the ins and outs as they come up. There may be exceptional cases, but don't bother mentioning them until they are relevant to the game. Try and give a bit of advance notice, so as not to screw someone over, but do not go over every exceptional case before starting the game.

You may also want to write a cheat sheet. Or get one off the internet. The site http://www.headlesshollow.com/freebies_games.html has many great examples; but they are not a be-all end-all source. I have hand written cheat sheets for several games, and found that they can cut massive chunks out of play time, as new players do not have to fumble through the rules, instead knowing exactly what is relevant to them.

A good cheat sheet should include anything that players need to know, but would otherwise have to look up. Key words, turn structure, scoring, set up instructions; whatever. Unless it is easy to remember or self explanatory, write it down in an easy to understand format. Do not explain complicated concepts in detail, do not be afraid to cut the fat out of a rule's desctiption, and do not try and include everything. Also, possibly even note important exceptions (such as that you cannot have 2 buildings with the same name in 7 wonders), or things that are easy to forget (start the game with 3 gold).

If there is any heavy lifting you can spare your newbies in set up, feel free to, particularly if they are not sold on the game. Sort out the cards you are not playing with, deal starting hands, shuffle the decks, set up the starting tiles, count out the tokens; anything you do not need their input on.

Include them in any interesting parts, particularly if it invoves them, such as revealing the races to select from (Small World, Cosmic Encounter), randomizing the world (Settlers of Catan, Dominion [Kingdom Cards]), or revealing the enemies you have to face (Thunderstone, Castle Panic, Pandemic [Initial infected cities]).

If you are desperate, play a round open handed. Or play a round not knowing the consequences of your action (this is mainly if you don't know the game either and are learning it as a group). Just get them playing and making decisions for themselves as quickly as possible; even if you have to fudge the rules a bit; even if you might make mistakes; even if you have to ignore certain rules that complicate things; DO IT. GET TO PLAYING THE GAME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

The sooner you start, the sooner it will 'click' in everyone's minds, the more you will all enjoy it,  and the more likely you will be to get to play again against them. Which is what it's all about. If a game is never played, then it will only ever be slightly better than monopoly.

But more on that later.

-Colin

Shadows over Japan (title pending)

In the interest of publishing some original content on the internet, I have decided to publish one of my own works this week. After agonizing which would be appropriate in length, content, and theme, I have settled on a board game that I have prototyped: Shadows over Japan (title pending).

It is an information management game, as far as I know, a largely untapped genre. To describe it as simply as possible - it is like a competitive version of Pandemic, with Ninjas thrown in. Each player is a Ninja clan who secretly supports one of the four Nobles of the time, and vies to make them the most powerful Noble in the land.

I have chosen this largely because it is one of the projects in which I have involved other people the most. This is the game in its current state, after many rounds of playtesting, with many more to go.

Starting off with the physical components:

• The board. It is divided between the four nobles:
• Oda Nobunaga (yellow)
• Takeda Shingen (red)
• Tokugawa Ieyasu (purple) [ This being a prototype, you will occasionally have to substitute black or green for the Tokugawa clan.]
• Da'te Masamune (blue)
• 6 Ninja Markers per player (24)
• Each player gets 2 of each fighting style. Markers are made from a nickel with a coloured sticker on each side, with the style marked on one side only.
• 8 of each fighting style Samurai (24)
• Same as Ninja markers, except white stickers
• 4 Noble Cards
• One for each noble, these indicate which Noble you are secretly supporting; revealed only at end game
• 5 Armies per Noble
• These are just their respective clan symbol printed and glued onto bristol board then cut out
• 20 development tokens per Noble
• You can use the disease cubes from Pandemic; I am using Pennygems
• The exact number isn't important, but it is good to have the same number of each colour, as it helps keep track of how many are on the board by how many are left in the supply
• 72 territory cards
• Hand made cards, more detail to follow
• 25 gold tokens
• Pennies - I am pretty sure that almost every prototyped game I have made involves pennies in some way
• Month Marker
• Something to indicate whether it is summer or winter; can be basically anything as long as it is obvious which side is which; colour a card red on one side and blue on the other
• 12 Intelligence cards
• Same backing as territory cards, again, hand made
• 12 Honour cards
• Different backing, hand made

I mentioned the fighting styles above, and should probably explain them at this time. There are three styles, Paper Crane, Stone Fist, and Scissor Kick. Rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock. Combat is deterministic, but because their types are hidden, it becomes extremely important to figure out what they are and keep your own hidden. Hence, information management.

What follows is the rules:

Setting up a new game:

Board Set Up:

1. Put all capital cards in the discard pile. Put 2 developments on them, plus a random samurai face down and an army of the appropriate noble.
2. Deal out 12 territory cards, then put development markers on each of those territories. Put the cards in the discard pile
3. Deal out 4 territory cards, then put 2 development markers and a random samurai face down on them. Put the cards in the discard pile.
4. Give 3 Intelligence cards to each Noble.
5. Put the Honour deck out; the number of cards is based on the number of players:

• 2 Players: 12 cards
• 3 Players: 9 cards
• 4 Players: 6 cards

Player Set Up:

Each player is randomly given (keep all cards hidden):

• A Noble Card
• 3 Territory Cards; put a ninja face down on these locations, then discard those cards
• Once Ninjas are placed, an additional 3 Territory Cards
• A turn marker (public, randomize who gets which)

Reveal all samurai. The game starts in Summer of Year 1.

A player turn:

Players go in order of their turn markers.

1. (first player only) Change the season marker, reveal an honour card if one is not revealed already.
2. Perform actions with your ninjas. A player gets six actions with his Ninjas for his turn. Actions are described in the next section.
3. (last player only) Award the honour card if it is the end of the year
4. Spend any gold as desired
5. Draw a card
6. Develop 3 territories

A full round of player turns (i.e. 1 turn for each player) corresponds to one season. Two seasons corresponds to a year; the game starts in Summer, and the year increases after Winter.

Ending the Game:

After the final Honour card has been awarded the game ends. At that point, the point totals are added up. Each player reveals his Noble card, along with any Intelligence cards he is holding.

Total up the Political Power of each Noble; the player whose Noble has the highest Political Power is the winner. Ties are broken by Military Power, and Economic Power, and then Gold.

Actions:

Moving:

You may either:

• Move to an adjacent province on land
• Cross a region of water to any other province bordering it

Note that Ninjas cannot stack, even friendly ones.

Interaction:

If you move into an enemy ninja or samurai, you must fight it. If you move into any army (even that of your own lord), you must infiltrate it; you cannot infiltrate if your ninja is revealed. You do not have to infiltrate occupying forces (see below). Either or both interactions costs an additional action to do.

Combat works as follows: ninja reveal their combat style; Stone Fist beast Scissor Kick, which beats Paper Crane, which in turn beats Stone Fist. If neither side is defeated, nothing happens (move back to whence ye came). Ninja remain revealed until they use a Substitution Technique.

Special Actions:

• Move an Infiltrated Army (costs 1 gold, limit 1 move per season)
  • This allows you to conquer territories in the name of the Noble who owns the army; if the army moves into any enemy territory, it is considered an occupying force – it cannot move any more, and does not count as an army for development or army movement purposes (another army can move into this territory). In addition, it removes any developments. The territory itself counts as belonging to the army's noble.
  • Armies moving into territories will kill any Ninja and Samurai there; they cannot move into enemy armies
  • Can move into occupying forces, to either liberate the country if it is the original owner, or occupy it in its place.
  • The infiltrated Ninja must move along with the Army
  • Armies moving through water can only move along the lines dividing water regions.
• Steal Intelligence from an undefended Noble Capital
  • Cannot be performed by a revealed Ninja
  • Reveals the Ninja in the process
  • See Intelligence (below)
• Sabotage an undefended development
  • Remove one development from the province.
• Substitution Technique: Requires you to move into an adjacent allied Ninja; conceal them if they are revealed, then swap their tokens if you wish.
• Seppuku: A ninja may choose to take his own life. This is generally a last resort.

Gold:

A player can spend gold in one of the following ways:

• Recruit a Ninja (max of 6)
• Move an Army that you have Infiltrated (as above)
• Draw 3 territory cards (max of 6 in hand, immediately discard any extras)
• Take the Initiative: switch turn markers with another player with a lower number
• Make an additional action this turn

Recruiting Ninja:

You must have territory cards in hand to spawn a new Ninja; choose one of your territory cards and discard it; place the Ninja there.

New Ninjas spawn in the spending phase; such that they cannot move or act the turn that they are spawned.

Developing:

At the end of each player's turn, he draws three Territory cards, and develops those provinces.

Basically, it goes:

From:	To:
Undeveloped	Single Development
Single Development	Double Development + Samurai
Double Development	Double Development + Samurai
Double Development + Samurai	Double Development + Samurai + Army
Double Development + Army	Double Development + Samurai + Army
Double Development + Samurai + Army	Double Development + Samurai + Army (no additional progress)

Note that if there are not enough of something to complete the development, complete what you can, and any other progress is not made. Note that an Occupying force does not count as an army for development purposes.

Mission Cards:

Every card in your hand has a mission associated with it. Discard a card when you complete that mission to gain 1 gold. A single action can only contribute to ONE mission. Note that you CANNOT complete missions against your Noble. Such cards are usually used to spawn new ninjas instead.

Power:

Economic Power:

Fairly straight-forward, the number of developments on the Noble's territory.

Military Power:

The sum of the following:

• Per Army: +2 (includes occupying forces)
• Per Samurai: +1

Political Power:

Not quite as straight-forward, it is the sum of one's Honours, less the sum of his Shames.

• Honours:
  • Per Honour Card: +1
  • Greatest Military: +3
    • Second Best: +1 (or tied for first or second)
  • Greatest Economy: +3
    • Second Best: +1 (or tied for first or second)
  • Per Conquered Territory: +1
  • Per Intelligence: +1
• Shames:
  • Per Territory Lost: -1
    • If a Capital is lost, it is worth -3 instead

Honour Cards:

Honour cards are revealed at the beginning of the year and awarded at the end.

• Safe Roads – fewest Ninjas in their counties
• Scholarship – most Intelligence
• Imperialist – most Armies
• Bushido – most Samurai
• Economic Boom – strongest Economy; Develop 1 extra territory each turn while this is revealed
• Arms Race – strongest Military
• Master of Craft – most double-development provinces
• Princess' Hand – greatest sum of Economy and Military
• Champion of Light – most cards in discard pile; Shuffle discard pile on revealing
• Humble – weakest economy
• Show of Force – most conquered provinces, tie breaker: fewest territories lost
• Monk's Favour – weakest Military

In the event of a tie, it goes to the Noble with less economic power. If that is tied as well, randomize its distribution between top contenders. If there are no eligible contenders, bury it.

Intelligence:

A Ninja that captures Intelligence draws that card into his hand. Any intelligence in hand at game-end is counted towards your Noble (+1 political power each).  

Photos of actual components:

The board. Note the many revisions it has undertaken to reach its current state.

The honour deck.

The turn markers. Simple is good.

The Ninja tokens. The Samurai ones are the same, except white.
The X is scissors, the circle is rock, and the paper is paper.

The army tokens. Printed, glued onto bristol board, and then cut out.

The territory cards. Each has a sticker to easily identify its Noble, a mission, territory name, as well as the region and number of that region. Capitals are starred, intelligence cards have a white sticker. 

My Token case. Tackle boxes are often very convenient for holding your gaming bits and pieces. 

The noble and season cards.

There it is. All in all, there is the board, the cards, and the token case. 

It is not a finished product yet, as I have a couple more changes I am considering:

• Adding a 'Rival' system to the cards; right now, a card for your noble can be either good for you (if developed for your noble) or bad for you (if drawn as a mission) - this would change it to be good for you (if developed) or bad for someone else (by making the mission against your Rival noble instead of yourself) - which will hopefully take out some of the luck factor to the game
• Additional rebalancing of the map - I have noticed that the game feels more strategic and less random the more clustered a Noble's provinces are. Additional testing is needed, but I might redo the map to further clump them up
• Rebalancing for 3 players - this is a tricky one, as often players figure out who is who very early, and the neutral noble with no ninjas gets ahead as all the players try and kill each other. I don't know exactly what to do to fix this, but it seems that the game plays best with 4 players for now.
• Enlarging Settsu - it is just too small on the map to fit the required tokens on it very well, which is why I have a large marker circle to put components that can't fit properly on it. (note that the other marker circle territory has since been removed)
• The Title - I have tried experimenting with names involving 'Ninja', 'Sengoku', and 'Feudal'; but haven't found anything that I am satisfied with yet.

Anyone interested in playing can contact me for print resolution images of the board and a full list of territory cards and their respective missions. Who knows, there may even be a kickstarter one day for it.

But more on that later.

-Colin